Download Abstract Tragedy versus Comedy. On Why Comedy is the Equal of

Tragedy versus Comedy:
On Why Comedy is the Equal of Tragedy
Matthew Kieran
University of Leeds, UK
ABSTRACT. Tragedy is superior to comedy. This is the received view in much
philosophical aesthetics, literary criticism and among many ordinary literary
appreciators. The present contribution outlines three standard types of reasons
(and the main variants therein) given to underwrite the conceptual nature of the
superiority claim, focusing on narrative structure, audience response and moral
or human significance respectively. It sketches some possible inter-relations
between the types of reasons given and raises various methodological concerns
about how the argument for tragedy’s superiority typically proceeds. The article
then outlines a normative account of a type of literary or dramatic comedy
– ‘high comedy’ – which proves to be tragedy’s equal. High comedies, it will be
argued, have complex narrative structures, shaping audience responses and
underwriting the moral significance of the comic mode. The received view is
unjustified, and appreciating why this is so casts light on the nature and value
of (a certain kind of) comedy.
KEYWORDS. Comedy, tragedy, ethics, literary value, moral value
I. INTRODUCTION
ragedy is in some significant sense superior to comedy.1 This is the
received view in philosophical aesthetics, literary criticism and among
many ordinary literary appreciators. Tragedy is taken as the highest or
most difficult literary form, while comedy is judged to be inferior.2 Criticism often characterises comedies as an escape from reality, light hearted
amusement or easy ridicule. By contrast, tragedies are serious stuff. They
traffic in profound emotions and confront us with uncomfortable reality.
On this view, literary tragedy confronts us with profound truths about
morality and the human world, comedy provides an enjoyable flight from
T
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES 20, no. 3(2013): 427-450.
© 2013 by Centre for Ethics, KU Leuven. All rights reserved.
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 427
doi: 10.2143/EP.20.3.2992657
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
it. The standard view no doubt helps to explain why much philosophical
ink has been spilt over tragedy, while comparatively little has been devoted
to comedy.3
Milton articulates the received view when he asserts that tragedy
“[…] hath ever been held the gravest, moralist, and most profitable of all
other poems” (1947/1671, 101) and, according to Albert, “tragedy, says
Hazlitt, is superior to comedy because it reveals human character more
truly and because it arouses more sympathy in other people” (1956, 1051).
Stolnitz’s philosophical examination of tragedy and comedy concludes
that, just as Aristotle argues epic poetry is inferior to tragedy, so too, we
should hold that “comedy is ‘lower’ than tragedy not only because of the
lesser intensity, complexity and subtlety of our response […] but also
because it lacks the compactness and vividness of structure which, as
tragedy unfolds in time, creates a tightly-knit, climactic and integrated
experience in the spectator” (Stolnitz 1955, 60). Feagin notes that “the
observation is often made that tragedies are much more important or
significant artworks than comedies […] There are great comedies, but the
significance of the greatest is not thought to reach the significance of
even less great tragedies. Why?”, and goes on to argue this is so because
“the basis for our judgements of the aesthetic significance of tragedy (as
opposed to the lesser significance of comedy) can plausibly be its calling
forth feelings which are also at the basis of morality. Judgements about
tragedy’s greatness derive from a recognition of the importance or morality to human life” (Feagin 1983, 98-99).
It is worth clarifying exactly what the nature of the superiority claim
is supposed to be. A host of associated empirical or contingent claims
exists that should not be conflated with the superiority claim as such. To
claim that tragedy is superior to comedy is not to claim that all tragedies
are better than all comedies; it seems manifestly implausible to hold that
really bad tragedies are better than really good comedies. It is not the
claim that an average tragedy is better than the average comedy. It is not
even necessarily to claim that the greatest tragedies are better or more
— 428 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 428
25/09/13 12:40
MATTHEW KIERAN
–
TRAGEDY VERSUS COMEDY
significant than the greatest comedies, though some (such as Feagin)
who hold the received view may take this to fall out of the basis for
holding the received view. As a matter of fact there may well happen to
be more good tragedies than comedies, i.e. perhaps more tragedies rightly
figure in the endless lists of greatest works or literary canons than comedies. Conversely, perhaps there are a greater number of good comedy
films than tragedies. Such claims are not without interest, but they do
not speak directly to what is at issue. The received view, as we saw from
the quotations above, depends upon constitutive claims to the effect that
there is something inherent in what is required for a work to be a good
tragedy which, when contrasted with the requirements of good literary
comedy, thereby renders tragedy a superior literary, dramatic or narrative
genre.
After outlining the standard reasons given for the received view, it
will be argued, via a positive analysis of a kind of comedy, that the
received view is unjustified. Indeed comedy, or at least a kind of comedy,
is, contrary to the received view, tragedy’s equal. Showing how and why
this is so will shed light on the nature and value of literary comedy (an
unjustly neglected topic within philosophical aesthetics).
II. THE RECEIVED VIEW
There are at least 3 distinct types of reasons taken to underwrite the
received view.
(i) Superiority of Structure: Tragedy involves a complex dramatic structure, which
comedy does not.4
The complexity of the tragic figure, it is often suggested, gives rise to
the complex dramatic structure of tragedy, whereas the simplicity of the
comic figure results in the simple dramatic structure of comedy. Tragedy
— 429 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 429
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
involves a dynamic transformation and moral regeneration of a protagonist’s thought and action via a dramatic reversal of fortune and the recognition of moral error through suffering. By contrast, it tends to be
assumed that comedy involves neither such a complicated interplay
between the protagonist’s thought and character nor the kind of moral
crisis that would precipitate it. Hence, unlike the tragic figure, the comic
figure is neither morally regenerated nor does he or she undergo a process
of moral learning.
(ii) Superiority of Responses: Tragedy, unlike comedy, solicits complex responses
from us based upon sympathy.5
Comedy, it is presumed, involves a particular kind of direct response. The
pleasures of comedy derive from ridicule at the salient failings possessed
by whomever or whatever is the joke’s object. The responses involved
are thus simple in structure and based on antipathy or at the very least
indifference. Tragedy, by contrast, calls on the responses of pity and fear.
The direct responses to tragedy are held to be superior, since feeling pity
and fear for the characters depends on sympathy, the foundation (at least
psychologically if not conceptually) of morality. Given that the direct
response of ridicule is based on antipathy or indifference, then comedy
is – to say the least – not quite so morally admirable (if not downright
suspect). Furthermore, it is claimed, tragedy enables a complexity of
meta-response that is unsupported by comedy. There are two distinct
variants here. One tradition has it that our commiseration with the suffering of the virtuous, concomitant with indignation at the prospering of
the vicious, gives rise to a meta-delight in contemplating the moral rectitude of our feelings in so responding (Hurd 1776; Feagin 1983). A rather
different tradition has it that through fearing for and pitying the distress
of others, tragedy enables the meta-response of pleasure to be taken in
the contemplation of our own security (Lucretius 1908/55 BCE, 41;
Upton 1748, 53-54). Thus tragedy is superior to comedy in so far as the
— 430 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 430
25/09/13 12:40
MATTHEW KIERAN
–
TRAGEDY VERSUS COMEDY
responses solicited depend on the core of moral feeling and support complex meta-responses.
(iii) Superior significance: Tragedy is of greater significance than comedy.6
This claim is often taken to fall out of, at least in part, (i) the superiority
of tragedy’s structure, and/or (ii) the alleged superiority of the responses
tragedy calls on when compared with comedy. The ways in which these
claims are taken to be true are commonly assumed to underwrite further
elaborations of the general claim to superiority. Such further characterisations of tragedy’s superiority are typically claims to the effect that, unlike
tragedy, comedy is unconcerned with matters fundamental to human happiness or morality (Feagin 1983) or statements of the putative fact that
we can learn something deep from tragedy whereas the cognitive gains to
be gleaned from comedy are trivial at best (Stolnitz 1955).
Although the three types of claims outlined above are distinct they
can be and often are intimately related. Versions of (i) the superiority of
dramatic structure claim can be taken to underwrite versions of (ii) that
assert the superiority of tragedy’s responses and (iii) the greater significance of tragedy. An alternative position might be silent about crossgenre comparisons with respect to dramatic structure and yet hold that a
version of (ii) the superiority of responses claim explains why (iii) the
assertion of tragedy’s greater significance allegedly holds good. These
sorts of interlocking relations between the types of claims outlined and
the reasons given to underwrite them are fairly typical. Nonetheless, the
three types of claims outlined can be held independently of one another.
It could be the case, for example, that someone might only hold to some
suitably characterised version of (iii) the claim that tragedy possesses the
greatest significance.7
The three types of claims capture what underlies the received view.
The question is, either singly or in some combination, do they justify it?
Are the claims any good?
— 431 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 431
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
III. INITIAL CONCERNS
Given the assumption that cross-genre comparisons make sense, there
are some initial concerns that should give us pause for thought. A couple
are methodological. The arguments in tragedy’s favour often seem to
proceed by assuming essentialism about both genres and then biasing the
relevant comparison class in tragedy’s favour. Stolnitz (1955), for example, concentrates on Lear as the paradigmatic tragic figure and takes
Charlie Chaplin movies as paradigmatic of the comic figure. The resultant
analysis is taken to show that tragedy enables a complex interplay of
thought and action from moral error through to moral transformation
and learning that comedy putatively cannot sustain. Although the generalisations about comedy and tragedy thereby arrived at may seem plausible in such a context, the framing effect is distorting. This becomes clear
as soon as we realise that neither the tragic nor the comic figure and their
concomitant dramatic structures must be as characterised.8
There are many successful tragedies that do not involve the moral
transformation or regeneration of character. Oedipus Rex, a masterpiece
of Greek tragedy, is a tragedy partly in virtue of a cognitive error.
Oedipus does not know who he is. The dramatic reversal comes about
when Oedipus learns the disastrous truth about himself too late, and
thus realises that he killed his father and married his mother. He chooses
to blind himself as a punitive symbolic act, but this does not signify
Oedipus’ moral regeneration or transformation of character in light of
his moral error. Oedipus’ self-blinding manifests the same moral character and courage that he has shown all along. This is far from being an
atypical case. The tragic errors central to Antigone, Ajax, The Trojan
Women, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, The Duchess of Malfi, A Doll’s
House or Saint Joan, to name but a few, are all at odds with the idea that
tragedy requires the moral transformation of a central protagonist. Furthermore, there are many successful comedies that have complex dramatic structures and often involve moral error and transformation of
— 432 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 432
25/09/13 12:40
MATTHEW KIERAN
–
TRAGEDY VERSUS COMEDY
central characters in various ways: Lysistrata; The Taming of the Shrew; Much
Ado About Nothing; The Liar; The Misanthrope; School for Wives; She Stoops
to Conquer; School for Scandal; Pygmalion and Annie Hall, again to name but
a few.
A distinct but related concern about methodology relates to the
intension and extension of the genre terms under discussion. ‘Comedy’ is
often taken to refer to works that are pre-dominantly amusing with some
sort of happy ending. These are then contrasted with a much more
sophisticated conception of tragedy. Far from picking out works that
conform to a similarly minimal conception of tragedy (i.e. predominantly
serious with some sort of sad ending), ‘tragedy’ is taken to pick out a
much narrower range of works that are characterised in tightly circumscribed terms with respect to appropriate subject matter, complex dramatic structure and effects. It is to compare a folk use of ‘comedy’ with
a highly technical literary conception of tragedy. This hardly looks to be
comparing like with like.
It might be said in response that the methodology derives from a
common linguistic understanding and use of the terms. This seems false,
however, and proceeding in this way serves only to render the alleged
superiority of tragedy a trivial matter. Tragedy is straightforwardly superior to comedy if ‘tragedy’ is defined in terms of a work’s adherence to a
particular complex artistic aim, structure and effect, while ‘comedy’ is
defined merely as works that seek to amuse. For the claim to be philosophically substantive, given that ‘tragedy’ is reserved to pick out a certain
kind of serious work with a particular structure and concomitant effects,
what must be at issue is whether or not an appropriately contrasting and
delimited type of comedy exists that can achieve a complex dramatic
structure, effect and value of equivalent significance. The methodologically sound way to proceed is to seek a characterisation of an appropriately contrasting and sophisticated kind of comedy and see what, if anything, falls out from such an analysis. If those who defend the superiority
claim argue in terms of what the best kind of tragedy realises, then the
— 433 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 433
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
claim must stand or fall in light of what we should say about what the
best kind of comedy can achieve.
Lastly, support for the received view depends upon a rather uncharitable characterisation of what comedy essentially involves; one that
stretches back to the beginnings of philosophical tradition. There is a
tradition that holds that comedy and humour more generally draw on base
feelings of superiority at the expense of others alongside a concomitant
lack of sympathy. Plato holds not only that comedy speaks to our baser
appetites as all art does (1985/375 BCE, 10, l. 606c-d, 437), but that it
does so through invoking malicious delight in contemplating the suffering
of others (1975/355-347 BCE, l. 48a-50b, 47-50). Aristotle’s few scattered
remarks on comedy have also been construed pejoratively. Comedy,
Aristotle suggests, is an imitation of lower characters involving some
defect or ugliness (1996/367-322 BCE, 5, 3.4, 9). Comedy’s pleasures are
identified as being similar to those arising from second-rate tragedies,
where the good end happily and the bad are punished, thus resulting in
comforting rather than challenging audiences (1996/367-322 BCE, 13, 7.2,
22). Aristotle’s remarks are often taken to support the idea that comedy
involves an unsympathetic easy laughter directed at ‘low’ ridiculed figures
we thereby feel superior to and such a view persists down through the
ages. Indeed, Hobbes infamously characterised laughter as consisting in
the “sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in our selves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with
our own formerly” (1684/1650, 55). Such a tradition lends itself to the
received view’s presumption that the easy ridicule central to comedy does
not require a complex dramatic structure, need call on only the most direct
of responses, and cultivates neither learning nor the feelings that are at the
basis of morality. Indeed, according to this line of thought, comedy is all
too closely related to schadenfreude and its attendant morally problematic
emotions such as malice and envy (Baudelaire 1986/1855).
However, construing Aristotle as a forerunner of the received view
should be deeply puzzling. The Poetics is, after all, a riposte to Plato’s
— 434 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 434
25/09/13 12:40
MATTHEW KIERAN
–
TRAGEDY VERSUS COMEDY
denunciation of art as involving an epistemic illusion, serving only to
indulge irrational emotions. It seems perverse to attribute to Aristotle the
thought that only the best kind of tragedy meets Plato’s challenge.
Aristotle explicitly claims that tragedy and comedy are the highest art
forms (1996/367-322 BCE, 4, 3.2, 8) and that even the putatively lower
form, episodic epic, answers Plato’s charge (albeit not in the strongest or
most effective way) (1996/367-322 BCE,26, 12.2, 47-48). It seems more
in keeping with the methodology and rationale of the Poetics to infer that
Aristotle held that comedy too trumped Plato’s concerns about art. Tragedies with happy endings may be second rate according to Aristotle, but
this is presumably because they import endings appropriate for realising
the ends of comedy. At the very least, it in no way follows from Aristotle’s
remarks that the characteristics he takes to be appropriate to comedy
proper are themselves second rate. It is just that these characteristics
make for second rate tragedies (as opposed to dramas per se). More generally, why should it be granted that the comedic representation of defects
or inferiority essentially involves a lack of sympathy and renders the form
itself inferior? To take but one example, Chaucer’s shrewish narrator in
his Wife of Bath is a lusty and overbearing schemer. She not only portrays
herself as such in the prologue, but also exaggerates the extent to which
this is so for comedic effect. Yet the humour and complex comic irony
achieved by Chaucer in the Wife of Bath’s prologue depends upon sympathy for her rather than indifference or antipathy. The wife of Bath’s vitality and generosity of spirit are bound up with a dogged determinedness
not to be taken advantage of. In moral terms this is particularly impressive, given that women in the fourteenth century were understood to have
few rights and taken to be the chattels of men. Hence the moral character
of the wife’s humorous self-portrayal of her last marriage and its conflicts,
between a woman and the clerical authorities that would condemn her, is
touching.
These concerns should be enough to cast some doubt on the received
view and prompt us to approach reasons adduced in support of it with
— 435 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 435
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
due care. Rather than going on to criticise in detail each type of claim
taken to support the received view, a more positive way to proceed is to
develop a substantive characterisation of a kind of comedy that promises
to fulfil – for comedy – the criteria supposedly underwriting tragedy’s
claim to superiority. In what follows, not only will such a characterisation
be given, it will also be shown that there are such comedies. Thus it will
be argued that, contrary to the received view, comedy, or at least a kind
of comedy, is the equal of (a kind of) tragedy.
IV. COMEDY’S COMPLEX DRAMATIC STRUCTURE
Echoing Aristotle, let us stipulate that in literary comedy the primary aim
in giving form to the raw material constituting a work’s subject matter is
the overall ludicrous treatment of action that is susceptible to such treatment.9 The overall qualification is required since comedies can have tragic
scenes, the function of which, ideally at least, is to provide an appropriate
contrast in order to heighten the general comic effect striven for. Ludicrous treatment involves representing something lightly, playfully or
absurdly. The means employed, for obvious reasons, are often mirthful
or laughter inducing, but these should not be confused with the nature
of ludicrousness itself. After all, works can be wryly amusing or sardonic
without being hilarious. Furthermore, what is being treated ludicrously in
the literary representation should, at least as treated, be susceptible to such
treatment. There are situations that naturally seem to speak to or call for
ludicrous treatment, from everyday mishaps to amusing misunderstandings, and it is important to recognise that it does not follow that such
subject matter or states of affairs are thereby trivial. The disparities
between aspiration and reality that are the stock in trade of comedies
range over, for example, the pursuit of love, social aspiration or matters
of life and death, to name but a few areas fundamental to our lives. Ludicrous treatment is often put in the service of seriousness of purpose.
Moreover, although certain types of events may naturally speak to a comic
— 436 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 436
25/09/13 12:40
MATTHEW KIERAN
–
TRAGEDY VERSUS COMEDY
rather than a tragic treatment, there is much subject matter that in principle can admit just as much of ludicrous as serious treatment depending
on the bent, talent and purposes of the author. Tales of someone being
arrested, rescued from suicide, depression or failures in love, for instance,
can be treated comically or tragically. Hence the nature of the raw material for the narrative itself is insufficient to determine the treatment
(though it may tend to speak to or prompt certain possibilities). It is the
primary aim that governs the form of the work and thus the ways in
which the content is represented to us as ludicrous.
One ideal comedic structure is that of a complex plot involving a
reversal of fortune, recognition and error.10 The reversal of fortune in the
best of such comedies should be sudden, unforeseen and in need of
explanation. Comedies typically involve the misfortunes and mishaps
of the central protagonist, in which disaster increasingly looms. At the
very moment when impending catastrophe is about to be realised or
indeed appears to have struck, there is a sudden and unexpected reversal
of fortune such that the central character’s fundamental goals come to be
realised. Its sudden and unforeseen nature affords maximum impact and
calls for explanation. If it seems like the wholly arbitrary stroke of good
fortune then it is mere happenstance. There should be a connection
between the state of good fortune arrived at and the trajectory of the
central characters. This requirement leads onto the second feature of this
type of comic plot, namely that of recognition. What renders the reversal
intelligible is the trajectory of the character from the ignorance implicated
in his or her errors and misfortunes to knowledge.
We can see how this structure works in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim.
Jim Dixon has stumbled into a provincial backwater of academia in austere post-war Britain. He loathes his subject, medieval history, but can
think of nothing better to do. Hence he hangs around, hoping that the
piece of scholasticism he’s cobbled together, entitled “The Economic
Influence of the Developments in Shipbuilding Techniques, 1450 to
1485”, will find acceptance by some obscure journal. It is, Jim thinks to
— 437 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 437
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
himself, “a perfect title in that it crystallised the article’s niggling mindlessness, its funeral parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw
upon nonproblems” (Amis 1984/1953, 14). His dreary boarding house
life, eking out limited funds on too few cigarettes and not enough drink,
provides the backdrop to a procession of blunders and mishaps. At a
party given by his head of department, Welch, who he both despises and
has to endear himself to, Jim is subjected to the odious tedium of group
singing and pseudo discourse on folk culture and high art. He proceeds
to get drunk, set his bed alight and, in an attempt to cover up his crime,
cut out sections from the bed sheets. Shot through all these events is his
relationship with Margaret, an aggressively vulnerable fellow lecturer.
Margaret’s frequent allusions to recovery from a recent suicide attempt,
prompted, Jim is led to believe, by a former lover’s abandonment of her,
serve only to trap him into acquiescence. His attempts to negotiate her
romantic projections are continually doomed, compelled as he is out of
politeness and consideration of her apparent circumstance into entertaining her forced intimacies. The cruel hopelessness of Jim’s situation is
compounded still further when he encounters the vivacious Christine,
seemingly attached to Welch’s son, Bertrand, a pretentious, vulgar pseudoartist writer from London. The coup de grâce apparently arrives when, at
his public lecture on ‘Merrie England’, Jim goes into psychological meltdown. He starts the lecture worse for wear from drink and finds that he
is involuntarily imitating Welch. He swiftly changes his manner only to
realise that he is now imitating the Principal. This culminates in the realisation that all is lost as Jim holds forth in an exaggerated version of his
original regional accent, laying bare his contempt for the tired scholasticism and sentimental idealism of his peers. The lecture ends in chaos with
Jim fainting just as the Principal and Welch try to drag him off.
The final chapters however see a swift reversal of fortune. The prospect of happiness dawns suddenly and wholly unexpectedly after apparent
disaster. Jim is told that he is no longer to be kept on at the university.
The very act that finally constituted Jim’s being true to himself has led to
— 438 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 438
25/09/13 12:40
MATTHEW KIERAN
–
TRAGEDY VERSUS COMEDY
the sack. As if to confirm the hypocrisy of the world Jim is being expelled
from, he then learns that his ‘Shipbuilding Techniques’ article has just
been published under the name of the editor that the piece was sent to.
Yet on returning home Jim finds he has just been offered a job in London, the very same one that Bertrand was after. Jim then meets with
Margaret’s former ‘lover’ and discovers that Margaret neither had any
such previous relationship nor had she genuinely tried to commit suicide.
She is revealed to be a manipulative, emotional, bully. Jim now sees that
he should break with Margaret, though he cannot see how. Deliverance
arrives in the form of the newly single Christine and they agree to embark
on the train to London together.
Maximum impact is achieved precisely because the reversal of fortune is unforeseen and unanticipated. The drama is enhanced because the
reversal, from utter misery to the prospect of happiness, involves such an
extreme contrast. Rather crucially, however, the reversal is not an arbitrary stroke of fortune since it is rendered intelligible through the dramatic structure of the plot. The reversal is itself tied up with Jim’s movement from ignorance to knowledge. Rather than aping the outward show
of all he despises, Jim authentically gives vent to his true feelings in the
lecture. The apparently disastrous result precipitates the reversal of fortune, by freeing Jim to take up the unexpected job in London. Almost
immediately afterwards, Margaret’s deceitfulness is revealed, making clear
to him the nature of the relationship he has been sucked into. This frees
him to be with Christine. The novel ends with Jim and Christine bumping
into the Welchs in the street. Jim reacts by howling with laughter at the
sight of them, overcome, as he is, with relief. He is free to be true to
himself and happy in the knowledge of what it is that he has just escaped.
It is worth saying a little more about the kind of error that should be
involved here. The misfortunes and mishaps prior to the reversal of fortune should be centrally bound up with some kind of error on the part
of the central protagonist. The kind of errors involved could range from
deeds done in ignorance to more fundamental errors of mind or
— 439 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 439
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
character. This enables the central character to be implicated in such a
way that the explanation of their misfortunes is not arbitrary. Hence,
although the events represented are pitiful, they can be represented as
comic rather than cruel. It is also important that the reversal of fortune
is not wholly undeserved. The central character must be decent in some
respects, ranging from being the performer of good deeds to being wellmotivated in some respects. Indeed the ways in which this is so may well
be tied up with the nature of their errors. Jim’s sympathy for Margaret,
for example, is what sucks him into a relationship that is false on many
levels. If the central character is decent in at least some respects then the
reversal of fortune comes as a welcome relief rather than something that
is deeply unjust. The unfortunate events as ludicrously represented are
thus pitiful, the misfortunes involved are not fully deserved and the treatment of them is ultimately hopeful to the extent that relief from suffering
and the prospect of happiness is realised.
Assuming this is an ideal dramatic plot structure we can now elaborate an ideal character object of such a comedy. The central character
should be represented as being somewhat worse than ourselves11: he or
she must be represented as being lower than standard normative expectations in some salient respect that is foregrounded as central to the dramatic development of the plot. This enables a ludicrous rather than serious treatment of the character’s misfortunes. However, despite falling
short of decency in the salient respect the protagonist cannot be utterly
wicked. The character must be redeemable or decent in certain respects
in order for the reversal of fortune to be a welcome one. The ideal dramatic resolution brought about through the reversal of fortune is one of
happiness or at least the prospect of happiness.
We are now in a position to refine the general characterisation of the
type of comedy given above. It is the overall ludicrous treatment of
the ways in which things can go well for us despite human fallibility. The
fictional status of events as represented in the narrative enables the treatment of characters and events to be shaped according to this primary aim.
— 440 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 440
25/09/13 12:40
MATTHEW KIERAN
–
TRAGEDY VERSUS COMEDY
This is best realised via a complex dramatic structure involving error,
recognition and reversal of fortune. Its ideal object or central protagonist
is one who is worse than us in some salient respect yet not wholly evil.
V. AUDIENCE APPREHENSION AND RESPONSES
The complex comedic dramatic structure outlined above underwrites
audience apprehension and response. Our natural delight in the ludicrous
treatment of such a plot structure enables us to contemplate the events
as we would not or might not otherwise be able to in real life. Both the
swiftness of condemnation that often follows the recognition of moral
failings and the fear arising from the recognition of disaster in actuality
can be put in abeyance as the reader apprehends the events as ludicrously
treated narrative fictions. Given the failings or errors of the central characters, the audience can happily entertain what happens to them as ludicrous. The central protagonist in Jane Austen’s Emma, for example, is a
self-deceived snob, given to meddling in the affairs of others according
to her own romantic flights of fancy.12 If we were to meet such a character in real life we probably would not take to her very well nor wish to
spend time in her company. The reader, aware of the work as fiction, is
free to see the foibles and follies of such characters as implicated in
unfortunate incidents as ludicrous without the psychological pressures the
real world brings with it.13
The comedic treatment of the central character must be sympathetic.
Only if this is the case will we be able to see the events represented as
both pitiful and hopeful. If we did not sympathise with Amis’s Jim or
Austen’s Emma, then we would not care about their aspirations, pity the
prospects of their being unfulfilled or hope that despite everything they
might be fully realised. If Jim or Emma were just nasty pieces of work,
then we would think that their travails were deserved and the upturns in
fortune a matter of undeserved luck. We would neither hope for such an
outcome nor feel sorry for them along the way. It is crucial that, despite
— 441 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 441
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
their faults, Jim and Emma are well-motivated. What leads to confusion
and near disaster in both Lucky Jim and Emma are the ways in which the
central character’s motivation is tied up with self-deception or self-conceit, thereby issuing in wrong action. Nonetheless, in the face of imminent disaster both attain true self-knowledge in the respective novels, just
when things seem too late. Hence, at a late point in the novels both
central protagonists become truly decent and thus deserving of the prospect of happiness. Once this is established, the novels play out the aversion of disaster through the appropriate dawning of a new, prospectively
much happier life.
We learn through such comedies how certain general traits of character can connect up and why their doing so in such a way threatens to
undermine the possibility of happiness. The general theme in both novels,
as confirmed by their respective denouements, is that true sympathy and
affection must be based on genuine knowledge of oneself and others.
Thus both novels in their different ways show us that, despite our errors
and with some good fortune, we can attain the prospect of happiness and
how we can do so.
We need a characterization of the distinct cognitive-affective attitudes
to which the different dramatic treatments and structures give rise. The
account argued for here holds that good literary comedy consists in the
ludicrous yet sympathetic treatment of one worse than us (which is what
often gives rise to laughter) who befalls various misfortunes, which gives
rise to both pity and hope, and yet who, in the very face of disaster, succeeds against the odds. Devoid of pity and hope, we would neither enjoy
nor delight in the protagonist’s ultimate success since we would be unconcerned about or appalled at the resultant good fortune.14 Comic catharsis
involves pity and hope.15
The ludicrous treatment in Lucky Jim and Emma enables the protagonists’ thoughts and actions to be entertained sympathetically (as we might
or otherwise would not in real life). We are drawn into and can enjoy
seeing the ways in which their errors lead to confusion and threaten
— 442 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 442
25/09/13 12:40
MATTHEW KIERAN
–
TRAGEDY VERSUS COMEDY
disaster while recognising that the resultant mishaps are pitiful and the
unexpected reversals of fortune are hopeful. Hence, as a comedy, both
novels get us to entertain and cognitively-affectively understand general
threats to and constituents of happiness. Furthermore, because of the way
in which ludicrousness enables sympathetic treatment, we are able to see
how Jim and Emma embody distinctive faults or make errors that we
ourselves are or can be prone to. The light treatment of errors allows us
to see something of ourselves in these rather different characters. Thus
our pity and hope for the central characters in both novels may in part
bound up with a meta-response of pity and hope for ourselves. Our relief
and joy at such happy endings is not just directed toward the central
characters, but also arises out of the recognition that despite our own
errors and failings we too may nonetheless attain happiness.
VI. COMEDY’S VALUE AND SIGNIFICANCE
What then is the value of the comic as opposed to the tragic mode?
Tragedy’s take on human fallibility affords two things. First, in confronting us with the ways in which things can go wrong for those even better
than ourselves we gain knowledge about how we too can go wrong. We
realise through our engagement with tragedy how error can precipitate
disaster and sever us from the prospect of happiness. Secondly, tragedy
proffers a particular motivation for taking its lessons seriously. It warns
us against complacency and hubris. Given that disaster through error can
befall those better than us, we should realise how much more easily it
could befall any one of us. If we value the prospect of happiness, we
should fear and be on our guard against error. Comedy’s take on human
fallibility is rather different. First, in showing us the ways in which things
can come good for those worse than ourselves, we gain knowledge about
how, despite error, we too can come right. We see through our engagement with comedy how error can be overcome and the prospect of happiness attained. Secondly, comedy proffers a rather different motivation
— 443 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 443
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
for taking its lessons to heart. It encourages striving and hopefulness.
Given that success can come to those worse than us, we should realise
that the prospect of happiness may be attainable by all of us. Assuming
we value the prospect of happiness, we can meaningfully aspire to and
strive for it (as opposed to just giving up).
At a more abstract level, the way in which we gain propositional
knowledge and motivation from engaging with comedy underwrites a
more fundamental cognitive-affective pay-off. What tragedy and comedy
share qua narrative fiction is the representation of thought and action.
The interrelations between thought and action are at least typically rendered intelligible and transparent through the narrative. This is in contrast
to our epistemic state in real life. The interrelations between someone’s
thought, character and action in the actual world are often much more
opaque to us. We know, for example, that Emma is well-motivated and
Othello is not essentially a jealous man in a way in which we could not
were the events real. We are, epistemically speaking, in a much harder
place when it comes to real life than we are with respect to narrative.
What narratives as such can do is cultivate our capacities to discriminate
states, thoughts, actions and their possible interconnections in the artificially clearer cases of fiction. The cultivation of these abilities with respect
to transparent possibilities can thereby enhance our capacity to do so with
respect to the much more opaque cases in actuality. Thus far tragedy and
comedy are on a par. The apparent servility of Shakespeare’s Iago
and Austen’s Steele sisters at particular times is revelatory of self-serving
characters. We do not just learn that servility can be self-serving but, in
doing so, exercise and cultivate the more general ability to see how the
tone and nature of particular outward actions can be revelatory of certain
character traits. Where comedy and tragedy differ is in cultivating the
capacity at a higher order level to take up distinct cognitive-affective attitudes towards certain kinds of interrelations between thought and action.
Tragedy develops our capacity to see certain kinds of errors in life as fundamentally serious, ranging from the breaching of social or psychological
— 444 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 444
25/09/13 12:40
MATTHEW KIERAN
–
TRAGEDY VERSUS COMEDY
boundaries to infidelities of the heart. It is important to be able to see,
where appropriate, a family falling out, a breach of friendship or flirtation
as errors both in and of themselves and in terms of their potentially serious consequences. To treat such things lightly, as tragedy warns us against
doing, can sometimes be a big mistake. Tragedy shows us not only what
to guard against, but the light of potential disaster under which such
things should often be apprehended. Comedy, by contrast, develops our
capacity to see errors in life light-heartedly. It is just as important to be
able to see, where appropriate, family rows, the falling out of friends or
flirtations as ludicrous. The ability to do so is what underwrites the acceptance and making light of mistakes that is often required for us to realise
the best in others and ourselves. To treat every error or breach seriously
can itself be a big mistake. Comedy not only encourages us to realise that
errors should not always be taken to heart, but how to see them in light
of the attainable prospect of happiness. The comic mode (just as much
as the tragic one) refines our capacity to take up an attitude that is required
in a life that aspires toward true happiness.
VII. COMEDY AS TRAGEDY’S EQUAL
The account of comedy presented here is far from exhaustive; indeed,
many comedies do not conform to the requirements outlined. The argument presented need not be committed to the claim that all the best
comedies must take this shape. The exclusion of much slapstick, satire or
farce from high comedy, for example, does not necessarily imply a devaluation of them. However, ‘high comedy’ picks out a recognisable type of
comedy of which there are many successful instances. Austen’s oeuvre
and Amis’s Lucky Jim are far from rare in conforming to this type of
comedy. Comedies by Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Jonson, Moliere,
Corneille, Congreve, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Fielding, Trollope, Wilde,
Shaw, and Woody Allen, to name but a few, have this kind of structure.
Such comedies possess the complex dramatic structure outlined above
— 445 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 445
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
that enables us to cognitively-affectively comprehend, clarify and deepen
our understanding of ways in which human beings can attain the prospect
of happiness despite themselves. It does so in part through the ludicrous
treatment of, and sympathetic engagement with, the central protagonist
in a manner that draws on and gives rise to meta-responses with respect
to ourselves. The moral significance and value of the comic mode is as
fundamental to human life and happiness as the tragic mode. Hopeful
comedy is the equal of despairing tragedy.16
WORKS CITED
Addison, Joseph. 1975/1711. “The Language of Tragedy.” In Joseph Addison: Essays in
Criticism and Literary Theory. Edited by John Loftis, 30-33. Northbrook: AHM.
Albrecht, W. P. 1956. “Hazlitt’s Preference for Tragedy.” Publications of the Modern Langauge Association of America 71/5: 1042-1051.
Amis, Kingsley. 1984/1953. Lucky Jim. London: Victor Gollancz.
Aristotle. 1996/367-322 BCE. Poetics. Translated by Malcolm Heath. London: Penguin.
Arnold, Matthew. 1925/1888. “The Study of Poetry.” In Essays in Criticism: Second Series,
1-55. London: Macmillan.
Austen, Jane. 1966/1815. Emma. In The Novels of Jane Austen: Vol. IV. Edited by Robert
William Chapman. London: Oxford University Press.
Baudelaire, Charles. 1986/1855. “On the Essence of Laughter, and, in General, on the
Comic in the Plastic Arts.” In The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. Translated
by Jonathan Mayne. New York: Da Capo.
Carroll, Noël. 2003. “Humor.” In The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics. Edited by Jerrold
Levinson, 344-365. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carroll, Noël. 2007. Comedy Incarnate: Buster Keaton, Physical Humor and Bodily Coping.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Carroll, Noël. 2013. “Science Fiction, Philosophy and Politics: Planet of the Apes as a
Thought Experiment.” Ethical Perspectives 20/2: 477-493.
Cohen, Ted. 1999. Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Cooper, Lane. 1922. An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Co.
Feagin, Susan. 1983. “The Pleasures of Tragedy.” American Philosophical Quarterly 20/1:
95-104.
— 446 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 446
25/09/13 12:40
MATTHEW KIERAN
–
TRAGEDY VERSUS COMEDY
Fleming, Rudd. 1939. “Of Contrast Between Tragedy and Comedy.” Journal of Philosophy
36/2: 543-553.
Gaut, Berys and Dominic McIver Lopes, eds. 2005. The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics.
London: Routledge.
Golden, Leon. 1984. “Aristotle on Comedy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 42/3:
283-290.
Hazlitt, William. 1869/1817. “On Modern Comedy.” In The Round Table. London: Sampson, Low, Son and Marston.
Hazlitt, William. 1913/1818-19. Lectures on the English Comic Writers. London: Dent.
Herrick, Marvin T. 1946. The Fusion of Horatian and Aristotelian Literary Criticism 1531-55.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1968/1651. Leviathan. London: Penguin.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1684/1650. “Humane Nature.” In Hobbs’s Tripos in Three Discourses:
Humane Nature, De Corpore Politico and Of Liberty and Necessity. London: Gilliflower,
Rogers and Fox.
Hume, Robert D. 1972. “Some Problems in the Theory of Comedy.” Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism 31/1: 87-100.
Hurd, Richard. 1776. Q. Horatii Flacci Epistolae ad Pisones et Augustum. London: W. Bowyer
and J. Nichols.
Janko, Richard. 1984. Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II. London:
Duckworth.
Janko, Richard. 1992. “From Catharsis to the Aristotelian Mean.” In Essays on Aristotle’s
Poetic. Edited by Amélie O. Rorty, 341-358. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
John, Eileen and Dominic McIver Lopes, eds. 2004. Philosophy of Literature, Oxford:
Blackwell.
Kieran, Matthew. 2010. “Art, Emotions and Immorality.” In The Oxford Handbook of
Philosophy of the Emotions. Edited by Peter Goldie, 681-704. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kivy, Peter, ed. 2003. The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lamarque, Peter and Stein Haugom Olsen, eds. 2003. Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art:
The Analytic Tradition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lamb, Charles. 1932/1823. “On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century.” In The
Essays of Elia. London: Everyman.
Levinson, Jerrold, ed. 2003. The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Lucretius. 1908/55 BCE. On the Nature of Things. Translated by Hugh Andrew Johnstone
Munro. London: George Bell.
Milton, John. 1947/1671. “Preface to Samson Agonistes: Of that sort of Dramatic Poem
which is called Tragedy.” In English Critical Essays: Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries. Edited by Edmund D. Jones, 101-103. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plato. 1985/375 BCE. The Republic. Translated by Desmond Lee. Penguin: Harmondsworth.
— 447 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 447
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
Plato. 1975/355-347 BCE. Philebus. Translated by Justin C. B. Gosling. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Potts, Leonard J. 1949. Comedy. New York: Hutcheson.
Russell, Bertrand. 1918. “A Free Man’s Worship.” In Mysticism and Logic and other Essays.
London: Longmans, Green and Co.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1969/1819, 1844. The World as Will and Representation. Translated
by Eric J. F. Payne. New York: Dover.
Smith, Adam. 1976/1759. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Oxford: Clarendon.
Stolnitz, Jerome. 1955. “Notes on Comedy and Tragedy.” Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 16/1: 45-60.
Sydney, Philip. 1947/1580-1581. “An Apology for Poetry.” In English Critical Essays:
Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Edited by Edmund D. Jones. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Upton, John. 1748. Critical Observations on Shakespeare. London: G. Hawkins.
Wimsatt, William Kurtz and Cleanth Brooks. 1957. Literary Criticism: A Short History.
New York: Knopf.
NOTES
1. As with much of the philosophical literature on tragedy, we will be concerned with narrative works in general such as plays, novels or films.
2. Canonical literary criticism that endorses or is often taken to support the received view
includes Sydney (1947/1580-1581, 26-27), Milton (1947/1671), Addison (1975/1711). Hazlitt
(1869/1817; 1913/1818-1819) and Arnold (1925/1888). For citations of a far wider range of
literary critics who take such a view – especially from the Romantic period – see Albrecht (1956).
Philosophical work that either endorses or is often taken to support the received view includes
Aristotle (1920/367-322 BCE), Schopenhauer (1969/1819, 1844), Russell (1918), Stolnitz (1955)
and Feagin (1983).
3. While contemporary companions to aesthetics in analytic philosophy have multiple articles on tragedy they contain little on comedy. See, for example, Kivy (2003), Lamarque and Olsen
(2003), Levinson (2003), John and Lopes (2004), Gaut and Lopes (2005). There are honourable
exceptions. Contemporary work by Ted Cohen (1999) and Noel Carroll (2003; 2013) comes to
mind though this tends to be concerned with humour as opposed to literary comedy. However,
while primarily concerned with physical comedy, Carroll’s analysis of narration in Keaton’s The
General is wonderfully illuminating (Carroll 2007). Somewhat earlier exceptions such as Janko
(1984) and Golden (1984) tend to construct an account of comedy mirroring Aristotle’s account
of tragedy. It is worth bearing in mind worries about essentialist characterisations of both tragedy
and comedy, but these will not be addressed here. See Hume (1972).
4. Subscribers to this type of claim range from analytic philosophers such as Stolnitz (1955,
45-60) to literary critics such as Wimsatt and Brooks (1957, 49).
— 448 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 448
25/09/13 12:40
MATTHEW KIERAN
–
TRAGEDY VERSUS COMEDY
5. Explicit advocacy of this type of claim can be found in literary criticism, see, for example,
Hazlitt (1869/1817; 13; 1913/1818-1819, 5-9; 31-32; 37; 35; 154-155) and Lamb (1932/1823,
165-172] and in philosophy, see, for example, Stolnitz (1955) and Feagin (1983).
6. The thought that the distinctive pleasures afforded by tragedy are superior in virtue of
calling on that which is at the foundation of moral life, namely sympathy, can be found in or has
been derived from works too numerous to mention (see footnote 6). This is commonly taken to
underwrite the presumption that tragedy is the highest or most excellent of literary forms. Classic
examples of this train of thought include Hazlitt (1913/1818-1819), Burke (1987/1757, 44-48),
Smith (1976/1759, 42-49) and Feagin (1983, 99). An emphasis on sympathy can be conjoined
with or kept separate from the thought that tragedy is superior in virtue of what it enables us to
comprehend or learn (Nussbaum 1986).
7. Russell, for example, suggests that tragedy is extolled as the greatest art form just in virtue
of its putatively clear sighted, courageous recognition of the ultimate meaninglessness of human
life (1918, 53-55).
8. The distortive framing effect is also manifest in Stolnitz’s assumption that tragedies are
essentially compact and unitary in structure whereas comedies are by nature episodic. This assumption, conjoined with Aristotelian reasons for holding that compact and unitary tragedies are superior to episodic ones, grounds Stolnitz’s claim that the dramatic and aesthetic effect of (episodic)
comedy is dissipated by comparison to (compact and unitary) tragedy (Stolnitz 1955, 58-60). Yet
many tragedies are episodic and many comedies are compact and unitary. If compact and unitary
works are the best in the relevant class then the comparison should be between tragedies and
comedies that are compact and unitary. Alternatively an argument is needed to show that (i)
comedy is inherently episodic and (ii) that episodic literature is inherently inferior.
9. It is not hereby claimed that this is exactly what Aristotle did mean or would have meant.
See footnote 14 for the relevant contrasts and differences between the present account and those
argued for by commentators engaged in trying to uncover or reconstruct Aristotle’s account of
comedy.
10. By way of emphasis, this is a normative account of the criteria that at least one type of
comedy should aim to fulfil. The reasons grounding the criteria will become clear but, in essence,
the thought is that such criteria enable a comedy to achieve a certain complexity of structure and
response. It does not automatically follow that this is the ideal comic structure since there may be
more than one ideal.
11. The common assumption that the central protagonist(s) in comedy must be represented
as being worse than ourselves can be traced as far back as Aristotle (1996/367-322 BCE, 5, 3.4):
“Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type – not, however, in the full
sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some
defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive.”
12. See the extended treatment of Emma and more general considerations in Potts (1949)
to which what follows is in part indebted.
13. See Kieran (2010) for an extended elaboration of how and why engaging with narrative
art can free us from responding as we would in real life.
— 449 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 449
25/09/13 12:40
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER
2013
14. It is worth noting that the account outlined remains neutral over whether catharsis most
fundamentally refers to the work’s dramatic structure or audience responses.
15. Commentators reconstructing Aristotle on comedy variously identify comic catharsis as
envy and anger (Cooper 1922, 65-69), indignation and insolence (Fleming 1939, 547-548), indignation (Golden 1984, 288) or more generally concerned with the pleasures of beauty and derision
or ridicule (Janko 1984). If a kind of comic catharsis is constituted by negative emotions such as
envy, anger, indignation, insolence or derision, this may be closer to capturing satire as distinct
from the kind of comedy characterised above.
16. I would like to thank two anonymous referees for Ethical Perspectives for their comments
that helped to improve the article.
— 450 —
Ethical Perspectives 20 (2013) 3
96669_Ethical_Persp_2013-3_04_Kieran.indd 450
25/09/13 12:40